


Where The Light Plays

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:22:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The first time the loft trio see one another naked." </p>
<p>Six vignettes on a theme.</p>
<p>Rachel/Kurt is about shared grief. Warning for that.</p>
<p>Otherwise, it's bitchiness and fun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where The Light Plays

Santana -> Kurt – _the one with the bath towel_

It’s the little things that are annoying. There are strange things in the fridge that Kurt has to Google to identify. There are the odd hours, and the morning rush, and the desperate lack of privacy that makes Kurt’s body ache in a way he refuses to think about. 

Then there’s the fact that he is absolutely convinced one of the girls is using his razors. He’s pretty sure it’s Santana, if only because Rachel respects her skin too much to use anything but her own products. Her skin is her livelihood. He’s heard it over and over, and he can’t disagree. He’s almost entirely sure that it’s Santana, whose disrespect of personal space and personal belongings they’d documented her first week in the loft. He flicks his thumb against the blade and throws his head back in despair. Blunt. Always blunt. He could scream. He’s stood in the bathroom wearing only the towel he threw on when he got out of the shower, and his spares are in his room because if he leaves them in the bathroom, those end up blunt as well. He could actually murder her. He’s sure he could find someone to help him hide a body. Maybe he could Google that as well.

To his knowledge, he has the loft to himself. Rachel is at school. Santana is – he has no idea where Santana is, but if she were home, he’s sure he’d be able to hear her. Santana doesn’t quietly occupy spaces. Her mere presence is loud. He could just get the spare blades from the trunk under his bed, where they’re safe with Bruce and the photographs he can’t bring himself to throw away, and the toys he hasn’t wanted to play with in far too long. 

He’s running back across the loft from his room when the door tugs open and he pauses, his head snapping up. It’s at exactly the moment when Santana’s head turns to face him that the towel around his waist loses its already precarious knot and drops to his ankles, his razor blade encumbered hands failing to grab the ends in time to preserve his own dignity. It’s only seconds before he has his hands covering himself, but that’s enough time for Santana. She grins and arches an eyebrow and yanks the door closed, her back turned with absolutely not subtlety to give him time to collect the towel. He’s not ashamed of his body – he’s worked too damn hard for it to be ashamed of it - but it’s the _Santana_ of the situation that makes him flush and scurry from the middle of the loft back to the bathroom, where he locks the door and leans against it with a heavy sigh. Her voice is full of laughter as she hammers on the door behind him. 

“Get some, Hummel,” she says, and Kurt feels his hair go red.

 

Rachel -> Santana – _the one with the hot date_

“I don’t even know why I’m asking you,” Santana declares. “Not only have I seen your underwear collection – and collection is a sad and loose term because you wear your nicest underwear to _dance class_ , which is weird, frankly, and you once wore animal sweaters without any hint of irony, Miss Penny Loafer, and let’s not forget your let a _hooker_ give you a makeover-”

“What do you want, Santana?” 

“I have a date which comes with a very real chance of finally getting laid in this town, and I can’t decide which dress says ‘fuck me until I can’t see’ more?” 

“Are you – seriously?” 

Rachel finally looks up from the magazine she’s been ignoring Santana from behind, to find her holding two bold bodycon dresses up against herself, alternating between the two. Behind them, she’s wearing not much more than a g-string and a backless bra. Rachel feels her cheeks go pink and she stares determinedly back down at her magazine. She thinks she’s read the same paragraph three times, so she turns the page blindly and stares some more. 

“No, Rach, c’mon. I’m actually asking for your help.” 

Santana reaches out and plucks the magazine from her hands and sets it on the table. “Red,” Rachel squeaks, not looking up. “Always go for red.” 

Santana drops the green over the arm of Kurt’s weird car seat chair and leans over the back of the couch to kiss Rachel’s cheek as she passes her. Rachel gets a face full of Santana’s cleavage as she turns to look at her, and blushes again. She reaches instead for her magazine and realises, belatedly, that the page is actually sex tips, and she thinks she can feel her ears glowing. Clearly Brody’s naked ass in their kitchen didn’t desensitise her as much as she’d hoped. 

“Good luck,” she calls as Santana disappears into the bathroom to fix her hair and wiggle into her dress. 

“Won’t need it,” Santana grins, slinging her purse over her shoulder and grabbing her jacket from the kitchen chair. Rachel still flashes her a thumbs up on her way out of the door. 

 

Santana -> Rachel – _the one with the curling iron_

Santana’s curling iron is broken. She doesn’t know how, but the fact remains – when she plugs it into the wall, it does not heat up. She needs her curling iron because she has to go to work, and it’s not that she _likes_ her job, and it’s not like it’s a job she would have chosen, but she knows she looks hot in go-go boots and hot pants, and she’s making okay money without having to waste the money her mom gave her on stupid things like rent. (She’s not paying Hummelberry rent for sleeping on their lumpy couch, except when they extort it through stupid things like _groceries_ and _electric_ , like, fine, she’ll sit in the dark, whatever). None of which changes the fact that her curling iron is inexplicably broken and she knows Rachel’s isn’t, so she’s just going to _borrow_ it and maybe return it tomorrow, or possibly next week. Realistically, she’ll give it back whenever Rachel realises it’s missing…

Decision made, Santana just bustles into Rachel’s room. She’s convinced she heard her and Lady Hummel moving around earlier in the morning, and she is absolutely positive that she heard the heavy slide of the door and the blessed relief of silence when it closed. Rachel is loud, and Kurt is a bitch, and there’s a peace that Santana will never admit she needs when they’re both gone. 

Only Rachel is still sitting at her dresser, back to Santana... her very naked back to Santana... and she’s concentrating on her phone, and she has tiny pink panties on with an adorable pink bow pattern, and Rachel has a really cute butt... and she’s naked. 

Santana isn’t used to being caught off guard, and Rachel is bent over her phone with her hair falling loose from her early morning pony tail, and Santana just kind of gapes at her, until she gets out a weak, “Um,” and Rachel’s head snaps up and round and her hands fly to cover her chest, phone forgotten as she squeaks a scandalised “Santana! You knock.” 

Santana’s rallies and retorts, _“KNOCK WHAT?”_

“I don’t know! Just _say_ knock or something.” 

“Okay. Okay, fine,” Santana takes a step back outside of the curtain and calls, obnoxiously but clearly. “Knock knock. I need your curling iron.” 

Rachel nods towards the corner of her room and the vanity case parked in it, and Santana has never moved faster. She virtually runs back out of Rachel’s area, curling iron clutched in her hands, and heads for the relative sanctity of the kitchen table. 

She does her hair in impenetrable silence, and tries not to think about Rachel’s tiny perfect boobs cupped in her soft pretty (man, she reminds herself) hands. She eats dry toast and is out of the door and on the bus before Rachel emerges, and that’s – that’s probably A Good Thing. Probably. 

(Rachel has lovely skin.)

 

Kurt -> Santana – _the one with the razors_

The first time he sees Santana naked, she has her foot on the rim of the sink and his razor in her hand, and there’s soap everywhere. For Kurt, it’s not even about the fact she’s standing in their bathroom in her virtually non-existent underwear so much as that she has her foot in the sink and his razor in her hand, and it’s just about fucking typical when he knows she has her own damn lady shave on the shelf not two feet away. 

And she’s got her foot in the sink. 

Her hair is pulled up in a turban on the top of her head, and she turns her face toward him in silent challenge.

“That’s my razor,” he says, and she nods, and wiggles it in the sink, and wipes her leg down with the face cloth before turning to face him. 

“Yours was already out,” she says. “I was going to throw it away.” 

“I don’t want you to throw it away. I want you to use your own.” 

She shrugs, her breasts rising and falling with the motion, and reaches for the first tub of moisturiser she comes across, which happens to be Rachel’s. Kurt grabs it from her hand and cants his head, glares at her, and she turns with an exaggerated sigh and reaches for her own. 

“You are so not a morning person, Hummel,” she says, muscles of her back and shoulders stretching as she reaches to the back of her shelf for her own products. “You need to learn to relax. Let England ease the tension from your muscles.” 

“My muscles are fine. _You_ are insufferable.” 

Santana’s grin is wolfish as she sashays past him with her moisturiser in her hand, brushing deliberately closely, her boobs against his bare arm, and blowing a kiss in his ear. Her perfect ass wiggles as he yells after her that she owes him new razor blades as well.

 

Rachel -> Kurt – _the one about shared grief_

For Rachel, it’s not even so much about the discovery that when the loft is hot, Kurt sleeps in just his boxer briefs. 

It’s their first summer in New York, and Rachel’s sadness remains palpable, a fourth body inhabiting the loft’s vast space. She tries not to let it show, but it’s still there in June, lurking in the quiet corners and creeping up on her when she’s alone. She knows that Kurt is sad as well, that the loss knocked some of the joy from his body that came with Blaine and their forever. She isn’t actively trying to put a damper on his potential happiness, but he’s the only person she has who can begin to conceive the depths of her grief. When the loneliness becomes unbearable, Rachel wraps her t-shirt ( _his_ t-shirt, really) tighter around her body and pads across the loft to Kurt’s area. 

“Are you asleep?” she whisper calls, and waits for a response. 

“Not really,” he replies, and then, “Come in.” 

He’s laying beneath a thin sheet that’s only pulled up to his waist and he pats the bed beside him for her to sit. “Do you need to talk?” he asks, and she shakes her head, because she’s still not sure she knows how to make the words form to just say she’s tired and sad and she doesn’t know how to process right now, but Kurt seems to understand. His arms are around her, holding her, and she buries her face in the warmth of his chest and listens to the reassuring thump of his heart until she finds it in her to hug him back. 

“Can we just – can we lay?” she asks, and he nods, his chin brushing the top of her head, and holds the sheet back for her to snuggle in beside him. She’s small, and Kurt thinks she’s getting smaller, shrinking under the weight of never saying goodbye instead of swelling because she got her dream role first time out, and she rests her head and her heavy heart on his pillow. Kurt scoops her petite frame into the warmth of his own and waits for her to cry. It takes time, but he has patience and all the time in the world for her hurting to manifest, and he just holds her against him and breathes in the comforting smell of her shampoo. Grief is exhausting, and they both sleep when the tears subside.

It’s when she wakes up to the grate of the loft door opening and closing again, and Santana’s subdued holler of greeting that she smiles gratefully. 

“You can keep his picture out,” she says, slowly, her voice wrecked and her face drawn. His hands are large – if not large enough – as they wipe the residue of tears from her cheeks, and his bare legs tickle the skin of hers. “You’re naked,” she says, and her laughter might be the perfect cure for his embarrassment. 

“Not quite,” he says, but the thin sleep stretched fabric of his underwear barely counts and they both know it.

“Thank you,” she says, and he presses a kiss to her forehead. “Anytime,” he says. “ _Literally_ , anytime.” 

She pulls away and gets up, looks back at him and she says again, not for the last time, “You really do make me wish I could be your boyfriend.” Her smile is delicate, fragile, but it stays and lights her eyes, and Kurt pulls the sheet around him, conscious now of his own nudity, and Rachel pushes the partition aside. 

“You’re okay,” she says. “The shower’s running.” 

And they both manage a muted laugh.

 

Kurt -> Rachel – _the one where they’re a little bohemian_

Kurt is used to having some of his most important discussions with Rachel whilst she showers. It’s the best time to catch her. She’s an obnoxious morning person. She wakes up sunny and ready to face the oncoming day. He remembers when they were in high school, when they’d have sleepovers and she and Mercedes would try to coax male insight out of him (which had been flattering, in its own way; still their go-to boy, despite being surrounded by back issues of Vogue and a face pack he was adamant would work wonders on Mercedes’ skin, not that there was anything _wrong_ with her skin to start with), she’d still be up with the first light, on her elliptical, burning pizza and sparkling cider with almost murderous intent. When he and Mercedes would finally emerge from their blanket cocoon, she’d already be halfway through her grapefruit breakfast whilst Kurt mumbled about eggy bread or charms or coffee, ugh, _coffee_. He doesn’t think of himself as _bad_ at mornings. He just needs time to wake up. But Rachel is up and ready to go, and so catching her in the shower is the easiest and surest way to make sure she’s in one place for long enough to discuss loft arrangements. 

(It also stops Santana yelling about Rachel singing scales before 9am.) 

It’s when Rachel is running a bath one evening, exhaustion heavy in her limbs after a hard day at school and the diner, and he says he’s got some things he needs to discuss with her, and she says if he’ll help her with her zip he can sit on the toilet like usual and discuss them now if he likes that they both realise how far they’ve come. Neither of them are blushing school kids anymore. They’re adults. Kurt is engaged. They’ve seen one another in various states of undress for months, and Rachel has crawled into his bed more than once over the summer and slept away the lonely grey hours of early morning curled into the warmth of him. They’d have been family, she says, one day, and as far as she’s concerned, he already is. He’s the family she chooses. His hands are steady on her spine as he pulls the zipper down, and she’s shrugging out of it and slinging into the laundry pile outside of the bathroom door before he can blink. 

“I’m going put that in the hamper,” he says, and she nods around the hair band in her teeth. 

“Wait,” she says, once she’s got her hair out of her face in a loose bun, and reaches behind her back for the clasp of her bra. “Might as well throw that in, too,” she grins. 

“You want me to wait for the rest?” he asks, and she laughs, slides her panties down her thighs. It doesn’t even register that she’s standing naked as a jay bird in the bathroom, the first time he’s ever seen her devoid of all her clothes, and, as he sorts the laundry into appropriate piles because he knows Santana won’t and it’s her turn, he realises exactly how far they’ve come. For a moment, he feels a little bohemian and smiles to himself before he pads on bare feet back to the bathroom and perches himself on the closed lid of the toilet and says, “So.” 

Rachel smiles at him over her shoulder and sinks further into the warmth of the water and nods. “So,” she repeats and then, “Sing to me, Kurt.” And he laughs and straightens his spine and obliges, because it’s Rachel and she’s family, and he loves her.

**FIN**


End file.
